


A Long, Dark Teatime With A Spirit

by scribblingTiresias



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: FTM!Varric, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen, Insomnia, My First Work in This Fandom, Self-Indulgent, Trans Character, Trans!Varric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-18
Updated: 2016-01-18
Packaged: 2018-05-14 20:09:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5756584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblingTiresias/pseuds/scribblingTiresias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Varric can't sleep. Cole wants to help, but isn't quite sure how. 1800 words.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Long, Dark Teatime With A Spirit

It's the darkest hours of the morning, long before the dawn, and Varric can't sleep.

 

He's tried taking a book to bed with him. A lot of the books in Skyhold tend to drift around from person to person, without a proper home- including, he's noticed, a couple of his own. (That makes him crack a smile, seeing them with honourable war wounds like that; he's glanced, sometimes, at the pages people dog-eared, and made a note of _which ones,_ so he can write more like that, later.) So he's picked up a couple of Genitivi's books, here and there, and a copy of the Chant, and a small army of terrible broadsheets- but he doesn't feel like reading _anything_ now, even the hilariously filthy (and outright wrong) one about the Champion of Kirkwall. They lie like a yellowed puddle at the foot of his bed.

 

He's tried poring over the modifications the Inquisitor has quietly ordered for Bianca – relearning her grooves and edges, fingers slowly moving over her the way he wishes they could touch her namesake. The wood's smooth and warm and smells a little like varnish; the metal's cold and ridged, the re-stringing mechanism poised. It feels like home. That would have been a comforting thing, once, but now, it's still not helping.

 

He's tried sneaking some tea from the kitchen- the cooks are all asleep, this late at night, so it's not even really hard. Steeping the tea is vaguely soothing, watching the dark leaves stain the water. Since he drinks it blacker than sin, from a mug that's probably more tea stain than mug at this point, it's done nothing to comfort him. In fact, it's probably set him more on edge.

 

Not that he'd admit to that, of course.

 

Varric's nursing the mug of tea now, balancing it between his knees, and sitting in his corner by the fireplace in the main hall. The place seems different at night. During the day, it's like Skyhold's heart- full of people passing to and fro and beating to the sound of hammers, as the Inquisition shores up the holes in the walls.

 

Right now, though, it's silent. Wind howls through cracks in the walls somewhere above his head, and the smell of snow drifts down. If it wasn't for that, he might think that time stopped for everyone but him.

 

He glances down at the mug again. His eye catches his thighs. He sighs.

 

There's only so much you can change a body, even with exercise and careful bandaging and a _shitload_ of lyrium. He's done his best, worked with what he had, and spent an amount of time and money he doesn't even want to _think_ about fixing what he couldn't fix on his own. It helps that he's a dwarf- everyone expects dwarves to be stocky, don't they?

 

There's a _lot_ of people in Skyhold, though, and not all of them know who Varric Tethras is. He keeps expecting someone to notice the patchiness of his beard, the wideness of his hips, or the pitch of his voice, and call him a 'she'. So far, thank the Maker, he's gotten lucky. But it'd only take one person figuring out the truth for the bad news to spread like a cobweb, draping from person to person.

 

Maybe that's part of why he hasn't been sleeping properly, he thinks.

 

He's so wrapped up in thought that he doesn't notice the footsteps on the air until they're nearly upon him.

 

For a second, Varric's mind blanks. He doesn't quite remember what he thought he heard, or why he instinctively bent to pull Bianca onto his lap- in the blink of an eye, there's someone standing behind him, who might as well have appeared there.

 

There are two people in Skyhold who prefer to stand at a forty-five degree angle behind your back when talking to you. One of them is the Inquisitor.

 

This is not the Inquisitor.

 

“Dusty,” Cole says. “Silt, and solitude, and spidersilk, and too- too quiet. You don't want to be alone. Echoes. But everyone else-”

 

“Hello to you, too, Kid.”

 

Varric sets Bianca down, gently. Solas says Cole is a spirit, or a demon, something like that, but he still doesn't want to wing him by mistake. He turns on his chair, just a little, enough to see the kid's face. Cole's squirrelly, he doesn't really like being looked at dead-on.

 

“...Did you need something, or...?”

 

“No,” Cole says. He sits down on the floor, crossing his legs.

 

“It aches,” he says.

 

“What aches?”

 

The mug is starting to slip off Varric's lap. He picks it up. It's a bona-fide Dwarven Craft, Straight From The Lowtown Workshop Of My Cousin's Husband's Aunt, and it's covered in capering nugs.

 

“Dull and leaden. A band around your waist. A cord about your hair. It's too tight. You've scraped your skin trying to loosen it. You've scorched the back of your throat, but you keep drinking it anyway. You're in _pain_.”

 

Was _that_ all he was worried about? Despite himself, Varric cracks a grin.

 

“Look, kid, I'm glad you came all the way down here, but...”

 

Varric gestures, vaguely, with the mug. Cole's eyes follow it.

 

“I'm fine. A burnt mouth never killed anyone.”

 

“No. Not it. Hot silver is still silver. It moves, molten. Saves a life. Ends a life. A shower of royals pouring from the mouth, clinking. Hitting stone.”

 

Cole tilts his head to one side, and that ridiculous hedge-mage hat slides down the back of it. Varric thinks he might lose it, but with another movement, it's righted again.

 

“Cold, cold is part of it,” he says. “A woman's face. A man's. You twist into a knot. They pull it tighter. The smell of leather. She pulls your hair tighter, and ties it off. Flies buzzing over meat you couldn't miss easily. Promises made to yourself, and shattered in a breath.”

 

“Kid-” Varric sighed. “Shouldn't you be getting to sleep?”

 

“I don't need to. This, this is more important. Even if I fooled myself into thinking that I need to- this is more important.”

 

Cole's face scrunches up in concentration.

 

“You're afraid they'll call you something else. It wasn't a bad name. But there it is again. Flies buzzing. Carrion. Coarse and rancid, corpse-like. It died a very long time ago.”

 

Varric glances down at the inside of the mug.

 

“I'd ask how you know this stuff, but...” he says.

 

“I'm different.”

 

Cole's said it more than a few times _,_ but as he looks up from under that hat of his, Varric thinks he _gets_ it. He's never going to understand Cole, not if he lives to be nine hundred years old and grows a beard down to his knees. But Cole is stuck between two worlds, and that's something he can comprehend. Sometimes, he feels the same.

 

“Names are … important. For people.” Cole studies Varric's face. “A fire scatters sparks. You scatter names. 'Tiny'. 'Hero.' 'Buttercup'. 'Nightingale'. 'Varric'.”

 

“It's not... exactly the same thing.” Varric half-shrugs, one shoulder rising and falling. “I needed a pen name. It stuck.”

 

“You stuck me, too.”

 

“What?” Varric leans forward.

 

“Pierced. Like an arrow. It soars. Streaking, slipping. Falling. Transfixed. 'Kid' on the fletching, gleaming in the sunlight. Why?”

 

“If it hurts _that_ bad, I won't do it anymore.”

 

“I didn't say that it hurt. I asked why.” Cole's eyes glitter bird-bright in the dim firelight.

 

Varric's first reaction is, as ever, to lie. It occurs to him, though, that Cole might have missed the joke again. Nicknames are the sort of thing that you feel in your bones. No one ever has to tell you why they exist...

 

Unless you're Cole. The kid hasn't even had bones to feel with for most of his life; he was just getting used to them now.

 

“Well, like you said. Names are important. Giving someone a nickname is a way to tell them that they're important to you. One way or another.”

 

Varric scoots back in his chair.

 

He's always been good at reading people, and he firmly believes that Cole is 'people', but it takes a good minute before he sees any sign of recognition on Cole's face.

 

“I think – yes,” Cole says. And then, in that same tone- “No one knows.”

 

“You've lost me again, Kid.” Varric rubs his eyes with the back of his hand.

 

“The name that died. Skin scraped raw and too tight. Joints crack. The brush rubs and rubs. Peeling, blistering. But the smell, it lingers. Still rotting. The water can't take it away. Hiding, fleeing, changing, none of it works. But – it's lies.”

 

He rocks back on his heels.

 

“All they smell is soap. The name that died isn't there. They don't know it ever happened.”

 

Varric frowns.

 

“They don't smell it, “ Cole insists. “They see _you._ ”

 

Afterwards, Varric would wonder if Cole was just telling him what he needed to hear, or if he really meant it. But right now, he knows it was the truth, in the same way he knows that Cole's sitting right in front of him.

 

“Well, thanks. Tell me something- do you play cards?”

 

Is this running from his problems again? He thinks it might be. But Cole has helped him, and he wants to return the favour, any way he can. Cole has said he wants to be treated like a person, hasn't he? Spirits might not need friends, but people do.

 

“No.”

 

Cole watches silently as Varric produced the pack from his coat pocket. He shuffles through them, fingers flicking past Cups and Swords and Pentacles like someone trying to find their place in a book.

 

“If you're up for it,” Varric says, “we can play this game I picked up in Starkhaven-”

 

“The rush of a stream. Warm metal in cold water. A fish rises to the bait. Its head pulled back- but it's not dead. Four fish in the same pail, gathered to be poured back.”

 

Cole smiles. It's a shy, hesitant thing, that smile, but warm as a candle.

 

“So you _do_ know how to play. I should stop being surprised.”

 

It's still dark, and he still can't sleep, but the night doesn't seem half as cold and lonely now. Varric shuffles the deck, one last time.

 

“Got any threes?” he asks.

 


End file.
